"Fiddler on the Roof" at Paper Mill

"Fiddler on the Roof" isn't aging well. The book is dusty; too many laughs feel dutiful rather than earned. Yente will steal your apples! Motel has a new "birth," but it's a sewing machine, not a human! Sometimes I just don't know, am I talking about a dowry or the sale of a milk cow?

In truth, "Fiddler" was not universally dazzling even in its first run. Famously, Philip Roth called it "shtetl kitsch," and Cynthia Ozick said it was an "emptied out, prettified romantic vulgarization" of Sholom Aleichem's work.

One problem is with the character of Tevye. Too often, he is seen reacting; he doesn't have a strong wish, and so he bounces from one child to the other, until the curtain call. (His wish for money is presented as a joke; we aren't meant to take this very seriously.) The Tevye in the show's final number could easily be the Tevye in the show's opening number; he greets news of his eviction with an unfunny quip ("This is why I always wear my hat!") -- and the curtain falls. (The song "Anatevka" is especially distasteful to me, and on Friday, one member of the audience began loudly singing along. I suspect this is because she was no longer absorbed in the events that were happening on the stage.)

It seems to me that Bock and Harnick strike gold with Hodel, who maybe deserves to be the protagonist. Hodel risks everything--abandoning home for a prison camp, in Siberia--in the name of love. Wisely, the writers allow Hodel to articulate what she is thinking:

Oh, what a melancholy choice this is--

Wanting home, wanting him....

Closing my heart to every hope but his--

Leaving the home I love.

There where my heart has settled long ago--

I must go.

Who could imagine I'd be wandering so

Far from the home I love?

In my view, the show is never more intelligent than it is in Hodel's three minutes of prominence. I have to tell it as I see it.

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